Web Site Designer/Developer (potential to be hired at senior or principal level)

Description

The University of Arizona Libraries is seeking a creative, enthusiastic, and dedicated professional with a strong proficiency in CSS to help our highly collaborative team implement visual designs in the browser.

We are a large academic library providing a broad range of collections and services while supporting diverse audience segments, including undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, staff, community users, and donors. We strive to build elegant, intuitive web products that help users achieve their academic and personal goals. As we continue to move our strategic plan forward, you’ll get to contribute to a wide range of challenging projects involving stakeholders from across the organization.

We value diverse viewpoints and the learning that comes from challenging our assumptions. We have fun with our work, take some risks, and foster a transparent, supportive culture where we celebrate in our successes and learn together from our failures. You’ll be working with colleagues who have expertise in visual design, user interface design, building websites with content management systems (especially Drupal), user research, user experience design, project management, content strategy, and backend development. We learn new things every day, and share our knowledge with others to encourage one another’s growth and development.

We’re committed to using the best tools and approaches to support the work. We build websites mobile-first and content-first, using HTML5, CSS3, and build tools that make it easier to work with CSS (like Sass and Gulp.) We use content management systems to empower our subject matter experts and support the lifecycle of web content. Mainly we use Drupal, but we also manage some Omeka sites and one WordPress site. Designing within those systems means we’re working with generated HTML and building for modular content structures that allow the design to scale.

We value open and frequent communication. Currently we use Redmine for issue tracking and Slack and email for asynchronous communication. We use in-person standups to talk about the work on a day-to-day basis and focused meetings to work on planning and process improvement.

Duties and responsibilities:

Collaborates with the web team to implement visual designs and create useful, usable, and accessible web sites:

• Coordinates design and CSS work for websites, digital exhibits, and custom web applications.
• Empowers the web team by building good design and coding practices into our process and into every site and tool we make.
• Works closely with the user interface designer to bring designs into the browser.
• Understands and applies the principles of user-centered design.
• Applies principles of usability and accessibility to all design and development.
• Makes thoughtful decisions based on user research, industry best practices, and team feedback.
• Learns and shares techniques for implementing designs and managing HTML and CSS code.
• Works closely with developers to make sure the HTML, CSS, and build tools make sense in the context of the technical architecture.
• Develops themes and assets for content management systems like Drupal to support design and content work.

Supports library websites and web content:

• Works closely with the content strategist to make sure our HTML and CSS code meets the needs of the content.
• Applies consistent branding in line with University of Arizona standards.
• Provides HTML and CSS support for new and legacy websites.

Collaborates with stakeholders and other library units:

• Serves on the website steering group and contributes to planning for future phases of web design and development.
• Works on projects with stakeholders in other library departments including Marketing Communications, Access and Information Services, Research and Learning, Special Collections, and the Office of Digital Innovation and Stewardship.
• Facilitates conversations, presents concepts thoughtfully, and translates technical jargon into plain language for stakeholders.

Solves problems and continuously improves processes and practices:

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• Continually learns about new tools and techniques in web design, HTML and CSS.
• Contributes to improving the processes and tools we use to do our work.
• Isolates, identifies, articulates and resolves problems.
• Performs testing and debugging.
• Assists with maintenance of and improvements to the Libraries’ web products.
• Educates others about design work and helps to establish and document best practices.

Minimum qualifications:

• Enthusiasm in learning in the fields of design, user experience, and web technology.
• Demonstrated experience writing HTML and CSS to implement visual designs.
• Strong communication skills, including active listening, and the ability to effectively collaborate with diverse faculty, staff and students.
• Demonstrated experience building responsive websites.

Preferred qualifications:

• Proficiency in writing semantic, standards-compliant, accessible HTML.
• Experience coding collaboratively and using version control (currently we use Git).
• Proficiency in writing CSS and JavaScript to progressively enhance content.
• Skill in creating style guides or other tools to help those with less visual design experience to understand and implement visual designs in the browser.
• Skill in selecting and using front-end development tools (currently we use Sass and Gulp).
• Experience creating templates and CSS for content management systems (currently we use Drupal and Omeka).

https://uacareers.com/postings/12223